Jim Christian Quotations

With them being a five seed, if there's (that many) teams better then them, I'd like to see who they are.

We knew, with this being senior night, that he was going to come out and play. You cannot let an offensive player get in a rhythm and we let him make a couple of jumpers early.

We knew what was coming. For us to have a chance, two things had to happen. We had to shoot extremely, extremely well and catch them on a night when they didn't shoot well from the perimeter.

We're not good enough to match up with those guys one-on-one. We have to rely on solid team defense to contain those guys.

Mike Scott has been giving us great defensive presence all year. The rebounds he got down the stretch were very key.

Now we have to represent the league in the right way. We have to show people this league deserves to get multiple bids.

Nobody thought we were coming back. I'm sure nobody in the arena (did). I could hear people screaming and complaining, but you know what, these kids don't think they're going to lose.

I can give arguments for both players. Without question, we wouldn't be where we are without either one of them, for different reasons.

I look forward to continuing my coaching career at Kent State. My goal, as it has been since the day I arrived at Kent State, is to continue the tradition our program has developed. We will strive to maintain the high level of excellence Kent State basketball has achieved in recent years.

For us to win, we needed Pitt to shoot poorly, and they shot extremely well. We just had too much of an uphill battle.

If that's one of the things that the hierarchies of the league think (will work), I'm all for it.

He especially did a great job of making some plays in the second half, getting in the lane.

He wants to do so well that sometimes he presses. He's trying to do so much, and he sees guys making plays, and he wants to do well.

He didn't play like a freshman today. He took care of the basketball. I thought that was a big play for us.

He is the toughest guy who I've seen play here. I really admire what he's done.

I take my hat off to them. A rivalry? I think it's two programs that have a lot of respect for each other.

I thought we played pretty hard tonight, which is all I'm concerned about. They're a tough team to guard, and whether we play here or in Alaska, I just want to make sure our team plays hard.

I wear pretty much the same clothes everyday. Just like those guys, I do the exact same thing every game day.

Some of my friends said I was taking the Kent job at the worst possible time. They said all I could do was go down.

Some guys on our team were visibly tired. We kept telling them in timeouts, you've just got to gut through it.

I was very proud of our kids. They had an opportunity at the end of the game, and they took advantage of it.

That was the whole game plan: to play for the four seniors who mean so much to this team. (Smith) really did that.

Winning 20 games this season is a huge accomplishment. When you look at the list of teams to have done it, we're proud, but we didn't play this year to win 20 games. We're playing to do bigger and better things.

We never got into a good rhythm offensively or defensively. We've been making a living on getting consecutive stops, and I don't know if we got one.

We get in there, get a sandwich, watch a movie. Those guys talk and laugh in the back. What I like is that it gives us a lot of time to spend with the guys. It's a different setting, and we're talking and joking around with them. They just enjoy it.

We had an unbelievable run in 2002, and that team will always be special in Kent State history. But this team will be in the very next paragraph.

We were able to keep to the same routine. We got a sandwich, popped in a movie, the kids talk and laugh at the back of the bus. That's where a lot of the memories happen. If you talk to the guys who played here, they say some of their best memories are of the bus rides.

We worked for several years trying to get it produced back East, but he also had a lot of other projects that kept him busy. He kept the option for years, but the show never quite materialized. I didn't lose any sleep over it.

This was a group of guys with unbelievable determination to win this game. Toledo played their hearts out, but these guys would not be denied.

Both teams played extremely hard. We had to rely on our depth. That's kind of what we've done all year. This is our style.

You have to walk out there and realize you're a championship team, too. You played good basketball to get to this point, regardless of who it was against. That's what we tell our kids. We can play with anybody, but we have to stay focused.

Boy, every time you think it's going to be tough for him to come back (from injury), he does.

At one point we were 6-5 and juggling our lineup to find the right combinations. Then it came together. They started to understand what we were trying to do.

Confidence, I think, is something that spreads throughout the team. When they see one guy playing with confidence, it kinda filters to the next guy, and so on.

Another guy who at one time was starting, was taken out of the lineup, never got down, kept working (and) worked his way back in. You can make that case for about six or seven of them.

Isn't it every director's dream to gene-splice to get the ideal person for every role? We had the same problem with the female lead: one actress with the perfect look, one with the voice. I thought, what has Hollywood done in this situation?

The seniors are the reason we play. It's our program, but it's their team. These guys have overcome so much. At one time or another, each one of them hasn't started. But they all handled it. They have stuck through it.

The thing I took out of that year is the most important thing you need to advance is great players. It's a one-game series and anything can happen. If your team gets hot, you have a chance.

On Thursday, all eight teams that walk through the door know they have a great chance to win it. That's why it's always tough.

A game like this, you've got to take advantage of your opportunities.

As long as you guard in a game like this when you know your legs are tired, you can find ways to win the game.

You never know what's going to happen. Guys gets hurt, and those (younger) guys have to get experience.

You're always looking to see who has interest in you. I would never say I'm not interested. I'm always willing to talk. You owe it to yourself to explore all your options.

This is probably one of the better defensive games we've played all year.

This means a lot for our administration to do this.

There isn't a kid on that team that doesn't know exactly what's going on with this year's team. It's family.

They're so good defensively, you have to take good shots, because you're not going to get second ones.

It's been a strength of ours all year. We play nine or 10 guys. We have different guys step up. We don't rely on one or two guys. We utilize our bench as much as we can.

It's great to have that kind of tradition. That's unbelievable. In a lot of places, after four years, guys are gone and never come back, but not here. That's what makes this program special.

It's sheer numbers. They're able to attract a type of player that we're not able to attract at Kent State. We're not making any excuses but we're probably not going to be able to get a McDonald's All-American, where they can.

I knew eventually he would turns things around.

In the first half, we had the best help on defense we've had in a number of games.

In order for us to have a chance in this game, Pitt would have had to shoot the ball poorly and they just shot the ball extremely well. We had to spend so much energy trying to fight an uphill battle and get back into the game.

In true leadership fashion he kept settling our team down. He's a great player. He doesn't have to just score. He's got to just control our team. He did that.

He's so enthusiastic to play this game after all the things he's been through. He nearly went two years without playing basketball. He's not the same player that he once was, but now, he does it on guts and determination. I'm so proud of him.